Limited Government Is

Tag Archives: Health Care

democrats voted to allow the murder of children. Of course, they won’t call it that.

Senate Democrats on Monday blocked a Republican bill that would have threatened prison time for doctors who don’t try saving the life of infants born alive during failed abortions, leading conservatives to wonder openly whether Democrats were embracing “infanticide” to appeal to left-wing voters.

All prominent Democratic 2020 presidential hopefuls in the Senate voted down the measure, including Bernie Sanders of Vermont, Kamala Harris of California, Cory Booker of New Jersey, Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts. The final vote was 53-44 to end Democratic delaying tactics — seven votes short of the 60 needed.

Three Democrats joined Republicans to support the bill — Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Bob Casey of Pennsylvania and Doug Jones or Alabama. Three Republicans did not vote, apparently because of scheduling issues and plane flight delays — including Kevin Cramer of North Dakota, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Tim Scott of South Carolina.

The bill stipulated:

The Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act would have required that “any health care practitioner present” at the time of a birth “exercise the same degree of professional skill, care, and diligence to preserve the life and health of the child as a reasonably diligent and conscientious health care practitioner would render to any other child born alive at the same gestational age.”

Here’s the thing. Born alive babies have Constitutional rights. I know that’s something which makes liberals wretch but it is true. The 14th Amendment:

No matter what the obstacle or what the challenge, Wile E. Coyote always seemed to come up with some massively complicated Rube Goldberg contraption that defied gravity and common sense to capture the Road Runner and finally get a decent meal out in the desert.

We think Wile E. was on the legislative team that concocted and helped pass the ACA, the ‘Affordable’ (sic) Care Act, otherwise now colloquially known as ‘Obamacare’ which is neither ‘affordable’ and has not covered every uninsured person as promised in 2010.

That analysis comes from CNN’s John King, who notes that Barack Obama has had some, er, problems connecting with the public in his second term. In the poll released yesterday, CNN asked respondents for opinions on twelve issues, and Obama didn’t get to 50% on a single one — but had majority disapproval for all but two:

In fact, his overall approval rating in the CNN series has barely budged from the announcement over a year ago that the IRS had targeted Obama’s political opponents in Tea Party organizations. It’s also about the same time that whistleblowers emerged to dispute the White House/State Department narrative on Benghazi, too. At that point, CNN had Obama’s job approval rating at 53/45, roughly where it had been since his re-election. It hasn’t been above 45% since.

Only on environmental policy did Obama register a positive reaction, but it’s mighty thin at 49/45. He scored 49/49 on terrorism, but most of the poll was conducted before Americans found out that Obama released five of the most dangerous Taliban figures from Guantanamo Bay — and did so illegally. Don’t expect that number to remain balanced for long, in other words. On issues closer to the midterm focus, Obama performs abysmally:

Economy – 38/61, down from 43/56 in September

Health care – 36/63, was 42/55

Foreign affairs – 40/57, same

Helping the middle class – 40/58, was not asked in September

The VA – 37/58 (new)

Ukraine – 38/53 (new)

The economy will be the real danger area for Democrats in the midterms, especially those running in red and purple states, and so will health care. Those are the top two issues respondents named for the most important issue in the country, 40% and 19% respectively — and they used to be Democratic Party strengths. The White House wants to talk about the environment and immigration, but neither of them even reach double digits on the priority list CNN gets from its survey.

This is the price of incompetence, and this was before the Bergdahl disaster. It’s left the White House and its Democrat allies no room to pivot anywhere. As King and his panel conclude, it’s not so much disagreement on the issues as it is a vote of no confidence in the man who’s implementing them.

By now, thanks to the hundreds of thousands of insurance cancellation notices that have been sent, it is well known that President Obama’s repeated assurances that if you like your current insurance and doctor you can keep them were not true.

And thanks to the recent reporting of CNN (where were they and the other media three years ago, when we needed them?), more people will realize that shortly after the passage of Obamacare the Obama administration implemented rules specifically designed to ensure that millions of people — those who provided for themselves on the individual market, i.e., who did not receive coverage through their employer or union — would not be allowed to keep their current insurance. Thus not only were Obama’s assurances untrue; they were purposeful deceit in which a supine press was complicit.

Actually, not “were” but “are,” since Obama has not acknowledged their inaccuracy, although the White House does now admit that a paltry 5% of the population who were so gullible as to buy what they mistakenly thought was insurance from “bad apple” insurers may have to “shop around” in the wonderful new exchanges he has created.

In a Friday (Nov. 1) press conference, Jay Carney insisted that “only a fraction of the population, estimated to be five percent, might end up losing their existing health insurance,” and in a Boston appearance two days earlier the president was, as usual, even more expansive in praise of his own creation.

One of the things health reform was designed to do was to help not only the uninsured but also the underinsured. And there are a number of Americans, fewer than 5 percent of Americans, who’ve got cut-rate plans that don’t offer real financial protection in the event of a serious illness or an accident.

Now if you had one of these substandard plans before the Affordable Care Act became law and you really liked that plan, you were able to keep it. That’s what I said when I was running for office.

That was part of the promise we made.

Actually, as everyone who has heard the nearly endless loop of Obama’s “you can keep them” assurances and received or heard of all the cancellation letters must know by now, that was no part of the promise that Obama made.

What everyone does not know — because it has not been widely reported — is that in attempting to respond to the “you can keep them” lie the White House has been repeating a second big lie just as serious as the first: that “only a fraction of the population” (Carney), “fewer than 5 per cent” (Obama), are the only victims, that the approximately 80% who get their insurance from their employer, union, or government program will in fact be able to keep their insurance.

No, they will not, and the administration and its Democratic supporters know they will not. Although recent attention has been focused on all the individual insurance holders losing coverage, the administration’s 2010 rules were written to undermine employer-provided insurance as well. John Hinderaker of the Powerline blog has looked at those rules and found that the intent was clear:

The bottom line is that the administration expected 51% of all employer plans to be terminated as a result of Obamacare. That is the mid-range estimate; the high-end estimate was 69%. So as of 2010, the Obama administration planned that most Americans with employer-sponsored health care plans would lose them, whether they liked those plans or not….

The administration never intended to allow any American to keep a non-Obamacare insurance policy for any length of time.

In September 2010, CNN has reported, Republicans in the Senate introduced legislation to reverse the new regulations. Hinderaker quotes Wyoming Senator Mike Enzi’s introductory comments pointing out that that the new regs made a lie of Obama’s “you can keep them” promise, for those on employer-provided as well as individual plans. “The regulation,” Sen. Enzi stated, “is crystal clear. Most businesses — the administration estimates between 39 and 69 percent — will not be able to keep the coverage they have.”

CNN noted that “Senate Democrats” (including many who now act surprised about all the policy cancellations they failed to prevent) “voted unanimously three years ago to support the Obamacare rule that is largely responsible for some of the health insurance cancellation letters” now going out.

The only mentions I have seen of Obama’s second big lie in the press are in two excellent recent contributions to Forbes online. Charles Conover thoroughly analyzed the impact of the June 2010 regulations and estimates:

if Obamacare is fully implemented, at least 129 million (68%) will not be able to keep their previous health care plan either because they already have or will lose that coverage by the end of 2014. This includes:

9.2 to 15.4 million in the non-group market

16.6 million in the small group market

102.7 million in the large group market

“In short,” Conover concludes, “the ‘vast majority’ are not keeping their health plans,” which the administration ensured (pardon the pun) by its June 2010 regulations. “Statements to the contrary are flatly untrue.”

A day later, and independent of Conover’s analysis, Avik Roy reached the same conclusion, noting that the administration’s regulations would and were intended to produce “massive disruption of the private insurance market.” Not just the for those with individual plans, he emphasized, “but also the market for employer-sponsored health insurance.”

Actually, the new regs did keep Obama’s promise to one special interest group of his supporters: unions. “Union plans,” Betsy McCaughey writes, “were ‘grandfathered’ with none of those fine print tricks and exceptions. (Sec. 1251(d)).”

The following is from the Congressional Record, Sept. 29, 2010, p. S7690:

Mr. ENZI. According to the administration, in small businesses, 80 percent of the people — unless this is passed — will lose the insurance they have and like, and in all businesses 69 percent will. Those are not my numbers; those are the administration’s numbers.

Mr. McCAIN . But isn’t it also true that is the case for small business and people and entrepreneurs all over America except the unions? Isn’t that true? Isn’t this a carve-out again, part of this sleaze that went into putting this bill together, part of the “Cornhusker kickback,” the “Louisiana purchase,” the buying of PhRMA…. Part of one of those sweetheart deals was the unions are exempt; is that correct?

Mr. ENZI. That is correct.

The recent attempt to claim, in effect, that Obama broke his promise only to “fewer than 5 percent of Americans,” as the president just claimed in Boston, is as big a lie as his repeated “if you like them you can keep them” assurances.

Unless, that is, your insurance is provided through a union.

It is becoming increasingly clear that when government controls health care, winners and losers are chosen by politicians for political reasons.

In a move that is reminiscent of the tyrannical actions of Abraham Lincoln that led to the War of Northern Aggression, Barack Obama says that he will not wait on states to enforce Obamacare. Instead his administration has announced its intent is to completely disregard the state’s Tenth Amendment rights to nullification of the Obamacare law, via their passed legislation and state constitutions. In fact, his administration has said that in states where they refuse to comply with federal healthcare mandates that agents from the Department of Health and Human Services will assume absolute control over the state’s health insurance industry.